Weekly Linkfest – Edition 13

Welcome to round thirteen of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.

I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculturenews.org with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.

Off we go:

Good News (coz we all need it):

Invention Awards: A Box That Keeps Plants Hydrated in the Desert. In 2006 Hoff took 25 Waterboxxes to Morocco’s Sahara desert, and after a year, 88 percent of the trees he treated had green leaves, while 90 percent of those watered weekly (the traditional local method) died under the scorching sun. In Scientific American he argues that planting 5 billion acres of trees – about 2.5 times the surface area of Canada – would be enough to offset annual emissions of 10 billion metric tons of CO2. Visit the manufacturer’s homepage here. See also this + this.

The fight is on to save Kenya’s green lung. "If the Mau Forest is destroyed, Kenya will die." This is the stark message of the scientist and Nobel Peace Prizewinner Professor Wangari Maathai from the University of Nairobi. See also.

The new book Unplanning by Charles Siegel goes straight against the strict and bureaucratic planning practices of modernism, which has ribbed our lives for life and meaning. Recommended by Prof.Nikos Salingaros!

Why Not Eat Insects? Marcel Dickes’ TED Talk. Personally I would prefer to eat insects than frankenfish. I’ve heard that all insects were able to multiply unchecked, they could within a year make a 0.5 meter thick layer covering all the Earth. Do we really have a food problem?

Loss of Biodiversity Makes Humans Sick. The problem, Scheiner’s study shows, is that when habitats are fragmented, the species most deeply affected are those that act as buffers for disease. Those that thrive happen to be the best carriers of pathogens.